P.S.[1] January 2, 1904. I have just received the proofs of
Axelrod’s article in Iskra
No. 55[2] (No. 55 will be out in a couple of days). It is much more
disgusting even than Martov’s article (“Our Congress”) in No. 53. We have
here “ambitious fantasies” “inspired by the legends about Schweitzer’s
dictatorship”; we have here again accusations about “the all-controlling
centre” “disposing at its personal (sic!) discretion” of “Party members
who are converted (!) into cogs and wheels”. “The establishment of a vast
multitude of government departments, divisions, offices and workshops of
all kinds.” The conversion of revolutionaries (really and truly, sic!)
“into head clerks, scribes, sergeants, non-commissioned officers,
privates, warders, foremen” (sic!). The C.C., it says (according to the
Majority’s idea), “must be merely the collective agent of this authority
(the authority of the Iskra editorial board), and be under its
strict tutelage and vigilant control”. Such, it says, is “the
organisational utopia of a theocratic nature” (sic!). “The triumph of
bureaucratic centralism in the Party organisation—that is the
result”... (really and truly, sic!). In connection with this article I
again and again ask all C.C. members: is it really possible to leave this
without a protest or fight? Don’t you feel that by tolerating this silently
you are turning yourselves into nothing more nor less than gossip-mongers
(gossip about Schweitzer and his pawns) and spreaders of slander (about
bureaucrats, i.e., yourselves and the Majority as a whole)? And do you
consider it possible to conduct “positive work” under such “ideological
leadership”? Or do you know of any other means of honest struggle apart
from a congress?

((The Martovites, apparently, have Kiev, Kharkov, Gornozavodsky, Rostov
and the Crimea. This makes ten votes+the League+the editorial board of the
C.O.+two in the Council=16 votes out of 49. If all efforts are at once
directed towards Nikolayev, Siberia and the Caucasus, it is fully
possible to leave them with one-third.))

Notes

[1]This letter is a postscript to the previous letter of December 30, 1903,
both being dispatched on January 5, 1904.

[2]This refers to Axelrod’s article “The Unity of Russian Social-Democracy
and Its Tasks”, published in Iskra Nos. 55 and 57.
Lenin here refers to the first part of this article published in issue
No. 55 under the sub-heading “Liquidation of Primitivism Summed Up”.